In May, the monthly import and export volume reached 357.23 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 59.4% – data released by Suzhou Customs allowed Suzhou’s foreign trade to set a new monthly growth record since February 2010.
In the first five months of this year, Suzhou’s total foreign trade import and export volume reached 1.48 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 37.5%, accounting for 7.2% of the country’s foreign trade and 52.2% of the province’s foreign trade.
Behind this set of data is a structural shift in Suzhou’s trade map.
Breaking it down, every key indicator points in the same direction: Suzhou’s foreign trade is completing the switch from relying on traditional markets to being driven by emerging markets, and new energy and electronic information manufacturing have become the pillars of this switch.
More than 50% of foreign trade comes from the “Belt and Road” market
In the first five months of this year, Suzhou’s imports and exports to countries co-building the “Belt and Road” were 778.86 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 64.4%. For the first time, the city’s foreign trade proportion exceeded 50%, reaching 52.6%, an increase of 8.6 percentage points from the same period last year.
In the month of May, this increase reached as high as 90.9%, contributing more than 70% of the city’s import and export increase that month.
In the past, Suzhou’s foreign trade relied heavily on traditional markets such as Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea.
Now, the explosion of emerging markets has become the biggest growth engine.
The person in charge of the Suzhou Customs Comprehensive Business Office said that Suzhou’s foreign trade “circle of friends” is being reconstructed, and emerging markets have become the biggest driving force.
During the same period, imports and exports to ASEAN and the EU also increased by 51% and 21.4% respectively, but the proportions were 21.1% and 11.5% respectively, which were far lower than the size of the “Belt and Road” market.
Exports of new energy products doubled, and imports of electronic components doubled
Underpinning the foreign trade data are two clear main lines of the industrial chain: the export of new energy products and the import demand of the electronic information industry are both growing rapidly.
On the export side, lithium batteries and photovoltaic products among the “three new products” performed well.
In the first five months, the city’s lithium battery exports were 12.77 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 87.5%; photovoltaic product exports were 4.24 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 109.6%.
Traditional advantageous products such as electrical equipment, household appliances, and printed circuits also maintained growth, with growth rates of 26%, 14.7%, and 33.7% respectively.
The import data illustrates the problem even more.
In the first five months, the city imported 481.48 billion yuan of mechanical and electrical products, a year-on-year increase of 65.9%, of which the import of electronic components grew as high as 107.9% year-on-year.
This shows that the global electronics industry chain’s demand for manufacturing in Suzhou is still rising. As a high-end manufacturing base, Suzhou is deeply embedded in the global semiconductor and computing power industry chain.
Processing trade is still the main force, with foreign-funded enterprises accounting for more than 70%
In terms of trade methods, general trade imports and exports in the first five months were 519.77 billion yuan, an increase of 12.5%; processing trade imports and exports were 706.14 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 57.4%, which is still the “basic” of Suzhou’s foreign trade.
The foreign trade data of Suzhou Industrial Park is more representative.
In the first five months, the park’s total import and export value of goods trade was 659.09 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 110.1%, accounting for 44.5% of Suzhou’s city’s foreign trade.
In May alone, the park’s import and export volume reached 179.5 billion yuan, an increase of 170.7%, setting a new monthly scale record for the tenth consecutive month.
Among them, the import and export of processing trade increased by 138.3%, accounting for 64.7% of the total foreign trade value of the park.
In terms of entities, foreign-invested enterprises’ import and export in the first five months was 877.75 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 42.3%, accounting for nearly 60% of the city’s foreign trade.
State-owned enterprises increased by 109.6%, and private enterprises increased by 20.4%.
The upgrade of foreign-funded enterprises from “production workshops” to “regional headquarters” is becoming an important support for the continued growth of Suzhou’s foreign trade.
Follow-up trends: New energy and AI industry chains may become key variables
Official and industry research institutions are generally cautiously optimistic about the subsequent trends in Suzhou’s foreign trade.
Suzhou Customs stated that it will continue to optimize the port business environment, promote the expansion and quality improvement of the comprehensive bonded area, and support the high-quality development of foreign trade.
Suzhou Industrial Park Customs pointed out that the import and export of high-tech products such as semiconductors in the park accounted for nearly 70%, and in the future, it will focus on specialty industries to maintain growth momentum.
An analysis report believes that import and export are expected to maintain strong resilience in the second half of the year, and the export performance of the electronics, AI, and automobile industry chains will be better than that of terminal consumer goods.
There are three supporting factors behind this: the capital expenditure cycle of overseas cloud manufacturers continues, and the demand for computing power-related products continues to grow; high traditional energy prices drive global demand for new energy products, and Suzhou is an important production base for the lithium battery and photovoltaic industries; the optimization of Sino-US tariff policies will help reduce trade costs and expand the scale of two-way trade.
Taken together, the growth rate of 59.4% in May is historical data, but the structural changes behind it – market restructuring, industrial chain upgrading, and the transformation of processing trade to high added value – are the key to judging the mid- to long-term direction of Suzhou’s foreign trade.
Whether the explosive power of emerging markets can be sustained and whether the global demand for new energy and AI-related industrial chains can remain high will be the focus of observation next.
